Potential for Using the Upper Coachella Valley Ground-Water Basin, California, for Storage of Artificially Recharged Water

The California Department of Water Resources, through the Future Water Supply Program, is investigating the use of ground-water basins for storage of State Water Project water in order to help meet maximum annual entitlements to water project contractors.

This report presents a preliminary evaluation of the geohydrologic fac- tors affecting storage of water by artificial recharge in the upper Coachella Valley, Calif. The ground-water basin of the upper Coachella Valley seems to be geologically suitable for large-scale artificial recharge. A minimum of 900,000 acre-feet of water could probably be stored in the basin without raising basinwide water levels above those that existed in 1945. Preliminary tests indicate that a long-term artificial recharge rate of 5 feet per day may be feasible for spreading grounds in the basin if such factors as sediment and bacterial clogging can be controlled.